Development expert to speak at Wake Forest on foreign-aid policies

February 11, 2008

William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University, co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute and a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution, will address the question, “Can Foreign Aid End World Poverty?” in a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 28 in Carswell Hall’s Annenberg Forum at Wake Forest University.

The event is free and open to the public and light refreshments will be served.

Easterly, widely regarded as one of the foremost development economists in the world, is the author of “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” which was included on lists of the best book of 2006 in The Economist, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. He is published often in scholarly journals and the mainstream press and is a critic of conventional, large-scale government aid programs that he says lack sufficient accountability and incentives to succeed.

Easterly’s appearance is co-sponsored by the Dvelo Fund, a fellowship program senior economics major James Beshara initiated to give students the opportunity to study development issues in the underdeveloped world; the department of economics through its John Moorhouse Fund; the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts; the Provost’s Office of International Affairs; and the Calloway School of Business and Accountancy.